What was that flash of light in South Florida night sky?

The bright flash of light seen by many in South Florida was likely a fireball, experts say. Or, put more accurately, and relatively speaking, it was a slow-moving fireball. Here’s the deal:

A fireball, according to Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard-Smithsonian, is “an unusually large meteor.”

Any time a meteor is brighter than the planet Venus, “that’s a fireball,” according to Joe Cox, president and CEO of Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale.

“We analyzed that data,” said Bill Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, “and what I can tell you is that fireball was caused by a fragment of an asteroid.”

Cooke said what people saw in the sky weighed about 900 pounds, had a diameter of more than two feet, and hit earth’s atmosphere at 38,000 miles an hour before burning up into nothing.

“This one was a slow poke as far as meteors are concerned,” Cooke said, adding some meteors hit earth’s atmosphere at 120,000 to 130,000 miles an hour.

Seen from West Palm Beach to Miami, the fireball only lasted a few seconds Monday night. It first came into view at 10:16 p.m., according to Cooke, and was first visible south of Grand Bahama island about 62 miles above earth.

Cooke said the fireball moved a bit east as it descended through earth’s atmosphere.

That big flash of light was the fireball breaking apart about 23 miles above earth, Cooke said.

“It’s basically all of its kinetic energy getting transformed into

heat and light,” McDowell said.

Cox said earth is hit by about 6,000 meteors a year, and roughly 17 per day. He said most land in the ocean or uninhabited parts of our planet.

“So we don’t get this kind of fire show as often as we would like,” he said.

By the way, the experts agreed the fireball wasn’t the 2021 GW4 asteroid.

McDowell said this fireball was not the GW4.

“The way you know it wasn’t GW4 is that Florida is still there,” McDowell said before slight correcting his tongue-in-cheek analysis of the potential destruction. “Well, maybe at least West Palm is still there.”

Cooke agreed this wasn’t the GW4, which he said is still orbiting the sun. He said they did the analysis at NASA.

“Totally different orbit,” Cooke said of what Floridians saw Monday night.

Asteroids — small, rocky

objects that orbit the sun like planets — are smaller than planets, NASA says.

The asteroid known as 2021 GW4 was scheduled to make an “extremely close approach” of just 16,000 miles, according to WPEC CBS12 News meteorologist Zach Covey. “The asteroid is roughly the size of a car, about 14 feet,” according to WPEC.

McDowell said this fireball was not the GW4.

“The way you know it wasn’t GW4 is that Florida is still there,” McDowell said before slight correcting his tongue-in-cheek analysis of the potential destruction. “Well, maybe at least West Palm is still there.”

Cooke agreed this wasn’t the GW4, which he said is still orbiting the sun. He said they did the analysis at NASA.

“Totally different orbit,” Cooke said of what Floridians saw Monday night.

For the record, here’s how NASA defines meteoroids, meteors and meteorites, according to its website:

“Meteoroids are objects in

space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as ‘space rocks.’ When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or ‘shooting stars’ are called meteors. When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.”

And many Floridians spotted its all too brief appearance. Of course, with so much video on social media, Cox said it’s interesting how many doorbell cameras might have captured the event.

And Cox, who hopes the light show sends a few more people to his museum, said there’s a definite silver lining to what happened Monday night.

“If a big, giant fireball racing down the east coast of Florida got everyone switching their Google searches to ‘What was that in the sky last night?’ and everyone learned the difference between a meteor and an asteroid,” he said, “then it was time well spent.”